Why We Like Retrospect
We first used this software in 1989 and after several rather painful experiences with competing Windows backup software programs, we came back to Retrospect. In the early days, it was known as Intelligent Backup, then as Dantz software, but the underlying concept of how backups should work remained the same. This is a very resilient utility.
Our conclusion regarding how most Windows backup solutions work, is that they default to failure. They will fail to properly aaccess backup media, fail to allow you to setup a backup job that executes, fail to perform the backup on schedule and fail to notify you when they fail to work.
Retrospect does none of these things; this program wants your backup to be successful. Although there are certainly challenges when it comes to setting up the program because of its flexibility and the number of options, at the end of the setup wizard you'll have a good backup.
Retrospect works with Windows and Mac operating systems. It will backup to nearly any hardware device, as well as other storage or cloud resources. The latest versions, beginning with Retrospect 11, supports every modern version of Windows. As Retrospect has ramped up development efforts in recent years the new releases have come fast and furious, with new features pouring out of development. If you're not sure the program will work on your system, please download and install a trial version.
Features
There are several features of Retrospect that make it a unique program. Since it predates most of the programs currently on the market, effective techniques were developed very early in the personal computer era that have proven reliable.
When a Retrospect backup is created the program builds a catalog of files that need to be backed up. It maintains aged versions of each file, according to your settings. When a backup completes, it builds a snapshot, which is simply a list of files. It also performs deduplication; it won't backup the same, unchanged file multiple times.
When it's time to restore, simply open up the snapshot of backup of the day you want to restore, browse through a tree of files in that snapshot and check off the files or directories you want to restore. The program will prompt you for the media which is necessary to restore the files you've selected. You can also restore an entire snapshot over a running system.
The only crime you can commit is to destroy media when you think it's no longer needed. To address this, the program allows you to move backup volumes from one type of media to another, so you may want to move disk backups to tape for archival, or from disk to disk, or from disk to cloud. You can make backups to the cloud or nearly any kind of media. Losing a catalog is solved by simply rebuilding the catalog.
This is a program you should try.